Work towards improving living standards of poor, Minister tells district officials

Minister aims to boost income and GDP in NTR district through collaboration with stakeholders and tourism initiatives.

District officials have to work in coordination with public representatives, people and voluntary organisations to ensure that the per capita income and Gross District Domestic Product in the NTR district are increased, said Minister for Health, Medical Science and Family Welfare Y. Satya Kumar Yadav.

Participating in the second District Review Committee (DRC) meeting at Kondapalli Fort in the district on Saturday, the Minister said the per capita income of NTR district in the financial year 2024-25 was ₹3,53,150 and the target is to increase it to ₹4,17,412 in the year 2025-26. At present, the district stood third in the State in terms of per capita income, the Minister said.

Similarly, Mr. Yadav, who is also the In-charge Minister for the district and DRC Chairman, said the growth target for the agriculture sector in 2025-26 is 15.94%, industrial sector was 18.57%, and for the trade, hotels and restaurants sector was 22.22%.

He said the district had many tourist attractions and that the administration had designed special tourism packages and also a temple tourism circuit, covering Kanaka Durga temple in Vijayawada. The temple package has been designed in such a way that those travelling to Tirumala-Tirupati from the North Andhra region can visit Durga Malleswara Swamywarla Devasthanam in Vijayawada on their way back, the Minister explained.

The meeting focussed on the Action Taken Report on 113 issues, some of which were MSP for chilli, identification of land for MSME projects, Crop Cultivators’ Rights Card (CCRC) to tenant farmers, raised by MP, MLCs and MLAs during the first meeting held in November last year.

The Minister said that though all the issues raised by people’s representatives in the last meeting and reviewed today were important, better results can be achieved through agenda-based discussions for an in depth sector-wise discussion in which people’s representatives can also contribute to over all sectoral improvement.

Calling for reforms in the DRC meetings, Mr. Satya Kumar Yadav has proposed that each DRC meeting may take up two sectoral themes like agriculture, tourism etc so that issues can be discussed at length.